


Dawn's Descent

by CkyKing, JazzRaft



Series: The Pious and the Profane [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Oracle!Noctis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 17:44:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10746675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CkyKing/pseuds/CkyKing, https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: Caught between Lucis and Niflheim, the Oracle of Tenebrae must choose : his duty, or his heart.





	Dawn's Descent

The sun shone brightly over Tenebrae, reflecting off the grass blades in an ocean of light and turning the sky into an unearthly blue expanse against the green and gold of the towering trees.

Noctis tilted his head up to better appreciate the warmth on his face as he carefully pushed Luna’s wheelchair down the trodden earth road, taking care to avoid the rockiest parts of it. Their outing was a welcome break in the last few days’ routine, so busy had they been. After all, it was not everyday that Queen Sylva visited, and even less for her own daughter’s sake.

When he had first laid eyes on Lunafreya, she had been pale and wan against her mother’s dark clothes, her breathing laboured as she fought against the corruption trying to drag her under. Noctis had shrunken back into his father’s side when the boiling miasma coming from her finally reached him, so horrified was he by the _wrongness_ of it. Something had started to uncoil deep inside his chest at this, the feeling strange and bright and _hot_ compared to the miasma’s coldness. It had only settled down at his father’s touch, arm a comforting weight around his shoulders as he allowed Noctis to bury his face in his side.

But now, she didn’t look anything like she had before, smiling as she observed her surroundings, happy to finally be allowed out of the healing chambers. It warmed something in Noctis’ chest to see the girl he had imagined from the letters his parents shared with Insomnia, and not the ghost that she had so strongly resembled. The difference had been jarring, especially for him who had been one of her most constant companions, always visiting her and telling her stories of Tenebrae’s marvels as she rested. He knew the toll healing took on both Oracle and patient after all, and had decided to accompany her through it, the little girl who shined so bright once the darkness had been burned away.

They had not known each other for long, but it was easy to fall into a companionable silence, broken only by the sound of crunching leaves and their parents’ voices waiting for them just ahead. Ravus was the one looking after them for this little trip, walking behind them sedately as they navigated the forests that Noct knew so well, having gone through them so many times with both his father and his mother. Luna’s older brother was a bit odd, seemingly too strict at times, yet, it was clear to everyone that he loved her, in spite of the fact that he had not been chosen by the Crystal. The prince didn’t seem to be thinking of that at the moment though, smiling slightly as he watched the two of them.

It wouldn’t be long until they reached the sylleblossom fields now; only a few clearings to cross and they would be there. Their kingdoms’ respective retinue were waiting in the middle of the next one, Sylva and Aulea joking like they had never left each other’s side while Regis teased Clarus about some thing or another.

When she saw them, Aulea waved her hand, beckoning them closer, long black hair like a banner in the wind. Faces once set and grim were now lighter, years seemingly disappearing in the timelessness of the forest that had witnessed the lives of their many ancestors.

Nobody expected the imperial airships that blotted out the sun above their position. Not Aulea’s informants. Not Sylva’s many spies. Not even the spirits that Regis regularly communed with.

“Sylva, take the children and _go_!” Aulea screamed, voice nearly overpowered by the first MTs reaching the ground. Before he could even realize it, his hand had already been taken by the Queen as she picked Luna up with her other arm, Ravus and his sword standing guard over both of them.

The last thing he saw before they started running back toward the manor was his mother’s back, crystalline fragments orbiting her hand before they coalesced into her famous rapier. Yet, the further he went, the worst the pain in his chest grew. The boiling miasma was back, got worse as distorted screams echoed through the trees, until it all started to blur. 

“Noctis!” The voices of Lucis’ royal family twisted and melded together in his mind as his hand slipped from Sylva’ calloused one, his fall almost graceful in the surrounding chaos.

“Mother, we can’t leave him like that!” Ravus cried as she continued running. Guilty silence was the only answer he got as they escaped, leaving behind their staunchest allies to fight for themselves.

Regis shoved Clarus in direction of the fleeing royals, hard, and refused to look back as he ran to his son’s side, knowing that duty would always be first in his friend’s heart. He pushed it all out of his mind when he saw Noctis’ state however, his arms and face crawling with dark tendrils.

A single word was enough to form a barrier around both of them, its presence signaled by a faint shimmer. It had barely settled before the air was torn apart violently by a single thrust of Aulea’s sword, throwing enemies away from them. She merely had a moment’s respite before a giant sword met hers in an overhead strike, forcing her to throw herself once more into battle.

Ignoring this, Regis carefully picked up his son and cradled him in his arms, his voice a faint murmur against his smooth brow. He was still so young, their child, never meant to encounter the scourge so early. If he could, he would have taken it all away, would have given his life so that Noctis could have stayed happy in Tenebrae, unknowing of the fate that awaited the Chosen King’s Oracle.

Laying his forehead against his son’s, Tenebrae’s Oracle let golden light gather around him as he marshalled his strength for the greatest act of healing he would ever attempt.

“It seems like we were fated to mean again, General Glauca.” Aulea could not help but throw out as she stood in front of her family. Until her son was safe, she would not allow anyone to step closer to them. She had already met that man several times on the battlefield, always ready to keep him away from Sylva. This time however, she could not let loose as she used to. The goal was to defend, and not to attack.

She had not fought like this in so long; battlefields forgotten in favour of Regis’ embrace, Noct’s smooth cheek against hers. For the happiness she had bled for.

Regret was a bitter taste on her tongue, and she wished she had managed to kill him back then; before he came back to shatter the peaceful life she had built piece by piece.

Those thoughts rushed in her mind and were discarded just as quickly when she assumed battle position, blade held at the ready above her head. Regis’ magic was a faint pressure at the back of her mind, allowing her to gauge the state of the barrier without visually assessing it. It would have to be enough.

As his wife fought, he carefully sent power coursing through Noctis’ limbs, nudging his own latent abilities into awakening. It was delicate work: too much, and he would become the new Oracle; not enough, and he would be consumed. Still, he kept at it, falling deeper into himself as a consequence. The usually calm lines of power that crisscrossed Tenebrae were a tempest at the edge of his senses, rebelling against the corruption that had set foot on the holy grounds. But Regis had eyes only for the small fluttering flame fighting desperately, screaming in the darkness for him, for his mother, for anyone to take the pain away.

Meanwhile, Aulea was struggling, arms straining against the might of the Magitek-enhanced fighter. She kept throwing herself in his path when he tried to head toward the barrier, but it was becoming more difficult to do so as time passed and the amount of MTs kept growing. The mechanical soldiers kept piling up around them, strewn on the ground in a macabre array of pieces, indifferently torn apart by both her blade and Glauca’s. Her eyes did not even register the scenery at this point, only the clear space between the debris and the footing it afforded her.

It was her undoing.

Everything took a turn for the worst when a bisected trooper, until then thought deactivated, caught her leg in a death grip, making her stumble and giving an opening to the General. With a burst of strength, unheeding of the pain that twisted her ankle, she threw her body to the side, boot braced against the MT’s helmet. Her shoulder screamed as it was pierced through, unornamented blade sliding home in one swift agonizing push. As it did so, her other arm came up, old reflexes kicking into overdrive as she pointed the tip of her rapier at her enemy, air gleaming lethally at its edges. With a yell of both pain and anger, she stabbed it forward in the juncture between torso and shoulder, attempting to pierce through the gnarled armour that covered his body. Just as her rapier met flesh, she felt her magic die out, blown away by an invisible hurricane that screamed of holy powers finally being unleashed. The pure rage contained in her voice at being thwarted so close to her target would have made any other man cower in fear, but Glauca did not even flinch.

Using the strength of his remaining arm, he sent her sailing through the air with a swing of his sword, only the barrier stopping her from knocking into her husband. Looking up at her opponent and savagely telling her body to _move_ , she barely caught the tail end of his movement, blade now held in a reverse grip above his head. Understanding flashed through her mind, as cold as the weight that dropped in her stomach, and she threw herself forward, leaving her rapier behind.

A little punched-out sound escaped her when the carefully aimed sword, meant for Regis, went through her, catching her in the chest this time and dragging her backwards with its momentum. The whimper that followed was worse, magitek and holy power clashing through her body where blade met barrier.

The shattering sound that heralded its disappearance was faint to her sluggish mind. She only had eyes for her opponent, who was still standing back, nursing his shoulder and simply observing them. Seeing this, she painfully turned her head toward the loves of her life, and started dragging herself to their position. Her chest was a mess of wounds, the overloaded weapon’s shards digging through her and competing against the healing magic that sang in the air around them, hindering her already slow progress.

Regis’ gasps were loud in her ears, his trembling apparent even to her failing sight. She knew she was done for, but she prayed to the gods she had never paid attention to until now that at least her son would be fine. She would not leave this plane before she had seen him one last time.

Her husband looked at her slow progression from the corner of his eyes even as he prayed fervently for their son’s, their beautiful son’s, life. Fierce pride in him lit up in her chest then, and animated her broken body with newfound energy. Even faced with certain death, he refused to give up. She could do no less.

“We love you so much, little star. And I hope you will find people that will make you happy, so happy you could cry from it.” Aulea whispered with her dying breath as she finally reached him, bloody fingers pushing back Noct’s fringe one last time before they fell to the ground, motionless.

If she only could pass on one last thing to him, let this be it. Let it be that he was loved, and that he would be happy, no matter what the future had in store for him.

Regis was still wrapped around him, shielding him from view and from harm for as long as his weakening body held. The last of his powers were drying up, his burden leaving him for a much younger soul, and despair clawed at him. He could do nothing else but give his life to his son, and hope that it would be enough to save him from the taint growing inside of him.

“Know that we will always be by your side, and that you are loved. You are so, so loved, my son…” The Oracle’s voice was a shadow of itself, voice broken by pain and, most of all, grief. In spite of this, he would hope for a future where Noctis could be happy. It was the only thing he could do now, he thought to himself as tears rolled down his cheeks.

It was those tears more than the lack of pain that finally woke him up, eyes fluttering open and looking around in confusion, water sliding down his cheeks in one last farewell. The first thing that hit him was how _warm_ everything was. Only a few seconds later did he understand why, finally noticing the blood staining his formerly white clothes red. As if his brain had wanted to protect him for as long as possible, his eyes slowly went to the people surrounding him. It seemingly took him an eternity to understand what he was seeing, to even piece it together, body frozen in place. When the horrifying picture revealed itself for what it was, the child scrambled to his knees, nearly slipping on the grass, as he laid his hands on his father’s cool face.

“Dad, Mom, please, wake up - _please_ ” The boy tried to rouse his parents as their dying forms protected him. But it was useless. He could feel it, their very life force bleeding away from their bodies in ever-diminishing amounts, until, finally, it stopped.

And Noctis _snapped._

Screaming his pain for all to hear, he hid his face - _bloody_ , mom, dad, don’t leave me alone - in his hands as his eyes turned to molten gold. Light erupted from him as he did, a divine spear to pierce the heavens, knocking to the ground MTs and survivors alike. It was a brutal and uncompromising magic, which purpose was to locate darkness, and utterly annihilate it.

It was too much.

It was thunder behind his eyes. A fire so hot that it felt ice-cold, purging through his veins. He screamed and curled up between his parents, begging them to make it stop because they always had before. Whenever he was hurt, whenever he was scared; they ran to him when he fall and scraped his knee, there door was always open when he fled thunderstorms in the middle of the night. They made it better. They made it go away. If he just stayed with them, he would be safe.

But it kept hurting. It kept rolling through him, bursting out in a white-gold pulse. He could _feel_ it crashing into the daemons. He could feel black screams bruising the edges of this _something_ that hurt so bad and wouldn’t go away. He felt an ache in his ears as he heard what sounded like a thousand voices booming incomprehensible phrases in his head. And he felt his chest hurting most of all as he plead with his parents to wake up. To help him, save him, hold him until the storm stopped.

But they wouldn’t move. He pawed at his father’s hand, begging him to wrap his fingers around his, squeeze, and tell him that he was here. He wept into his mother’s chest and he didn’t understand why she didn’t reach up to soothe circles into his hair. What did he do wrong? Why weren’t they comforting him? Was he bad? He didn’t mean to be bad, whatever he did, he didn’t mean it, he wouldn’t do it again, he promised just, please, wake up?

A shadow rose over them and Noctis turned wide eyes back to find a suit of horrible twisted armor approaching them. It was a bad thing. A strange thing. He wasn’t supposed to get too close to strange things. Not unless Mom and Dad were with him. Even though they were with him now, they weren’t _working_. They were broken, they were sick, they were sleeping, and he couldn’t wake them up. They wouldn’t want him to talk to the stranger. They wouldn’t want him to stay there. But if he shouldn’t stay with a stranger, then they shouldn’t, either, right? If it wasn’t safe for him, maybe it wasn’t safe for them.

Noctis scrambled over the grass, tugging on each of their hands to try and get them away from the thing. But they were stuck to the ground. He couldn’t move them. The armor was getting closer and he couldn’t get them up. He yanked and pulled and screamed at them to _move_ , but they wouldn’t listen to him. He clawed at the collar of his father’s coat, he tugged on his mother’s hair, he hugged around her neck and tried to drag her back with him, but he barely moved her. She was like a stone in his arms. Unmoving and _cold._

He had to get them away from the bad thing. He had to get them warm. Mom was always telling him not to catch a chill. Cold was a bad thing. The armor was a bad thing. The light throbbing at the edges of his eyes was a bad thing. But he couldn’t get them all away from any of it. He couldn’t move them, but he couldn’t _leave_ them.

The armor was standing over them now, watching his pitiful attempts to tug at his parents. What did he do? He was hurt, and only his parents could make it go away. But they were cold, and they couldn’t help him if they were cold. He had to get them warm so they could make him better. He couldn’t run away. Not without them. But he couldn’t stay with the armor. His parents would be even madder at him if he stayed near the armor, he knew that they would, but… but…

He whipped his head around in search of help. He was supposed to find an adult he trusted. Someone he knew to help him if he couldn’t find his parents. But all around him were fallen, sparking MTs and kindling burning where trees had just been. There were a few more strangers in armor limping around in the distance, but he couldn’t find anyone he knew.

Where was Aunt Sylva? Where were Luna and Ravus? Where were the servants that gave them cookies after they were done playing? He was alone. He didn’t know what to do when he was alone. He was told to stay where he was if he was alone so that his parents could come find him. But they were there. But a stranger was there, too. He didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know what the stranger was going to do, he didn’t know how to make it stop, how to make his parents wake up.

He was overwhelmed. Head pounding and heart tearing and blood fuming and light burning and it was all too much. The whole world tilted in front of him, went blurry, and then black.

***

It wasn’t what he wanted.

But then again, he wasn’t sure what it was he wanted in the first place.

He didn’t think it was this. Not this echo of the wholesale annihilation that had spurred him towards the Empire’s service – if he could even call it a “service.” As he had approached the whimpering, terrified child, resplendent with magic he didn’t even realize he was wielding, Glauca slipped quicker and quicker beneath Drautos, and Drautos paused in the bloodied grass to ask himself, _“What am I?”_

What was he that he could create this frightened, wisp of a thing, tugging forlornly at the arms of corpses? What was he that he could bathe the idyllic forests of Tenebrae in fire and blood in the fashion of what became of his own home? Staring down at the gasping, sobbing, ruined boy, Drautos asked himself: what was he that he could re-create himself in this child?

The boy – now Oracle – collapsed onto his dead parents. The Astrals’ magic continued to hum in the air, continued to cleave at the magitek troops like hurricane winds through a field of wheat. The red-eyed husks were strewn far and across the charred fields, limbs twitching with scarlet sparks; joints clicking in a hundred different directions; a grotesque opera of un-death all around him.

A few of the handlers were still standing. Men and women in dark silver armor, limping to rejoin him, and looking hardly any different than the un-living things short-circuiting beneath their feet as they reached him. They were all as dead as MTs were. Armored corpses, killed in Niflheim raids, and taken to fight the rest of their war. Stuffed into cold metal suits that animated dead limbs to drag more corpses into their ranks.

Drautos glanced down at Aulea through Glauca’s helm. He glanced at Regis. And he glanced at Noctis between them. Even dead, the Caelums were too much alive to ever be fashioned into empty armor. With their hands curled towards their son, they looked just as if they were on the verge of waking. Just as if their fingers would squeeze slumbering comforts around his small arms.

“General,” one of the remaining soldiers told him, voice metallic beneath his helm. “The Queen has escaped.”

If he had wanted anything, he would have wanted Sylva dead. It was Lucis that had failed his ghost so many years ago. Not the Oracle or Tenebrae. Glauca hissed somewhere that they were just as complicit though. That Tenebrae’s bonds with Lucis were clamped so tightly together that they might as well have been one.

Nevertheless… Drautos saw the tear-soaked, blood-touched face of the quivering, unconscious child and he couldn’t find anything else but that. He couldn’t see royalty. He couldn’t see an Oracle. He couldn’t see Tenebrae or Lucis, or any country’s colors.

He just saw himself.

Abandoned in the wreckage of everything he had ever loved. Another orphan of a war no one had ever asked to fight.

And he hated the Crown all the more for it.

For leaving them all to this destruction. This torment. This un-ending suffering of children that knew nothing of borders, of politics, of these games men in power played. Of people being fashioned into weapons for conquest.

He should have killed the boy. Said it was an accident in the midst of all the slaughter. Another casualty caught in the crossfire.

Drautos thought it would have been a mercy.

Glauca thought the brat deserved the suffering of living.

***

The Emperor was _impressed_ by the devastation.

Hundreds upon hundreds of magitek units felled by a single scream from the newly christened Oracle.

Power was a commodity to Iedolas. It wasn’t something to be respected or afraid of, it was something he had to _own._ He was an addict behind that imperial visage. Took one to know one, otherwise Drautos wouldn’t have been able to see it. When he looked at Glauca in the mirror, he could see the same skewed and obsessive slant to his eyes that the Emperor was so good at hiding from anyone who didn’t know how to look for it.

He’d wanted the Oracle delivered to his throne room immediately. He’d wanted to hoard this tiny bastion of fresh power all to himself. Like a dragon stealing into a vault of gold to covet it beneath his wings. Just to have. Not to spend. Not to do much of anything with it. Just to say that it was _his_ now. He took it just because he could.

Watching the small Oracle, standing on shaky knees, half-conscious, face still raw with blood and tears, was like looking into a reflection. Another orphan, another innocence spoiled by the nightmares of war. Another reincarnation of himself, after he’d brought so many others before the captains and doctors of the army for recruitment. After so many had been brought before _him_ to be crafted into what he’d been crafted into.

Drautos could see Iedolas measuring the Oracle now, shrewd eyes cultivating the child’s value. Pride at the Empire’s victory in obtaining this prize shining in his gaze. Drautos tried to make himself feel some of that pride, as well. But all he felt was nauseous and haunted by the boy’s pleas in his sleep as he had carried him to the throne room.

“ _Mom… Dad… Please…”_

“Here I had assumed the Oracle’s power was limited to mending wounds and talking to ghosts,” Iedolas said, voice echoing in the vast, vacant hall.

There were magitek guards lined along the walls that were constantly distracting Drauto’s attention from the conversation at the center of the room. The automatons were twitching and shifting and their heads kept switching towards the Oracle. They shouldn’t have been moving. But the boy’s magic was still so fresh and un-contained that even Drautos could feel the air vibrating around him as it simmered through the dark avatars tasked with monitoring the hall.

Iedolas didn’t seem to notice the way the red eyes were transfixing themselves on Noctis, so transfixed was he himself. Not unlike one of the MTs himself.

“You’re safe here, child,” said the Emperor. “There’s no reason to look so afraid.”

Noctis stared vacantly at a tile just beneath the dais of the throne, blinking rapidly against the sting of tears and the beats of magic trying to fit inside him. He was a vessel too small for the amount of power Regis had imparted to him. The child wasn’t meant to be Oracle so young.

“I can assure you that you will be afforded the same if not better comforts here than you did at home. You will not be a prisoner of the Empire; you will be our guest.”

Noctis raised his quivering gaze a fraction then, wide blue eyes paralyzed with fright. He fought to push off his tongue, and when he finally controlled his voice enough to speak, they fell in a stuttering, whimpering mess onto the throne room floor.

“But… I… I want to go home…”

“My child, I’m afraid that won’t be possible for a long time. No one remains to take custody of you, so your guardianship now falls to the state. I can assure you that you will be well-cared for within the Empire.”

Noctis curled into himself, squeezing his eyes shut as if that could blot out the whole room, tricking himself into believing that he could open them again and he would be at home. It was no trick when a voice, deep and dark and comforting, cut through the throne room.

“The Oracle is guarded by the gods above the Empire. I will be taking custody of His Highness from here on.”

Noctis’s eyes snapped open and Drautos’s arm snapped to the hilt of his sword. There was a man, standing behind them. He didn’t know how he had entered the room. The doors had not opened. No herald had announced any arrival. And yet there he stood. A plain-looking man. Middle-aged, brown hair, in simple Crownsguard uniform. The most intimidating thing about him was the sword belted to his hip. And more unsettling was that the man’s eyes were closed.

Yet, Noctis scurried to the man, faster than Drautos could catch him with a wounded arm. A sob ripped through the boy as he collided with the stranger, arms clutching around his hips and hiding his face in his shirt, trembling with strangled cries. The man paused, closed eyes turned down to the bundle of tears before hesitantly resting a hand along the back of his neck in a hug.

Drautos glanced back at the Emperor, catching his sharp gaze. An incredulous exchange at the sudden intrusion of the stranger, as well as the Oracle’s instant attachment to him. Iedolas managed not to look shocked by the appearance, though his gnarled fingers tightening around the arm of his chair indicated his worry. In a voice calmer than Drautos felt, Iedolas asked, “And who might you be to make such a claim?”

“The Oracle called me Cor,” the man said, tilting his head to the side, as if he were listening to someone whisper in his ear. “I am a Messenger of the Astrals. And they say this child is _mine_.”

**Author's Note:**

> after much diabolical plotting over the course of the last we don't even know months, the fully fledged, comprehensive, nyxnoct oracle au is coming! hold onto your butts! (tags updated per chapter)


End file.
